Although they aren't known for having the biggest cannons, the Chinese were definitely the first builders and also the first to point them at people they didn't like. For many reasons, though, they stopped using them, mostly because while the big guns terrified the folks they were pointed at, they also had a little defect. They blew up.

A functional miniature replica of a Chinese Hand cannon, and a Hand Bombard, Europe 1380

Europeans really took to the idea of a thick metal cylinder, a charge of gunpowder, and a nasty surprise to hurl at people they didn't like. A first these early cannons were simple mortars: a lump of bell-shaped iron (because bell-makers were the first cannon-makers) with a hole for the charge and the shell. They still exploded as often as they fired, but unlike the Chinese, the Europeans thought the bang was worth the buck. As long as someone else lit the fuse, that is. Once they got that whole "exploding in your face" thing fixed, or at least tuned down to a dull roar, they began to really play the "mine is bigger than yours" game.

2. The First True Supergun

The first true "supergun" was The Great Turkish Bombard, which was also called the Dardanelles Gun, the Royal Gun, the Hungarian Cannon, Muhammed's Great Gun or the less common but more honest "Good Lord, Look at the Size Of That Thing."

Built in 1453 in Hungary and used by turks to conquer Constantinople, they shocked their builders by unexpectedly doing what they were designed to do: lobbing a 1,500 pound granite sphere at whoever they were pointed at.

3. Tsar's Bragging Monster

Not to be outdone, the Russians swaggered up with their own Mutually Assured Demolisher. Forged in 1585, the Tsar Cannon was a 35-inch-wide yawning monster designed to toss 800 pounds of grapeshot -- a whole lot of little cannon balls instead of one big one. The Tsar Cannon was never fired, but that didn't stop the Russian military from boring everyone by bragging about how huge it was.

It's said that the first world war was truly the first modern war. Poison gas, tanks, air combat, the machine gun -- they were all gleefully experimented with during those years of trench horror. But the classics were used as well, the old standby of thick metal cylinder, a charge of gunpowder, and a nasty surprise, never really going out of style. But as this was a modern war, the classic cannon got a big -- a very big -- upgrade as well.

It's odd that such a monster got a woman's name, but the always-romantic Krupp engineers did just that: smashing champagne over the 17-inch-caliber gun, they christened it after their boss's -- possibly zaftig -- daughter. Big Bertha, or more accurately "Fat Bertha" was a hit with the German military, showing the Belgians at Liège, Namur and Antwerp, and the French at Maubeuge who had the really big one.

But that wasn't enough. Sure Bertha had the thickness and the length, but what the Germans wanted was something to really show off -- especially since those swaggering Americans were about to enter the game.

4. Long Max to follow Big Bertha

Searching for something they could get to their Eastern Front, German military engineers glanced out at sea and hit on the idea of transplantation instead of simple enhancement . To put it simply, the Long Max was a naval gun, the biggest one the Germans had. Luckily it quickly got its land legs: on the battlefield it showed its potency by shooting off 1,600 pound shells a respectable distance ... of 30 miles.

But that wasn't enough. The Paris Gun wasn't named because it reminded those warm-hearted Krupps of the famous City Of Light. Hardly. Another transplanted naval piece, the gun has sometimes been called the first terror weapon.

Although it needed a lot of maintenance, didn't shoot anything very heavy or destructive, but it still horrified that romantic city by dropping shells from ... wait for it ... 80 miles away.

It was a monster to the Germans as well -- mounted on a special train carriage, it was so loud that a set of regular artillery was fired along with it to hide its thunderous discharge.

Side note:

Dr. Kapitza proposed an interesting Electric Cannon in 1932, which would use no gun powder, generating noiseless magnetic explosions - a sort of silent "Big Bertha":

"SILENT guns sending their whistling messengers of death into the sky at speeds far beyond those now attained by powder-driven shells..."

Then, as Monty Python said, peace broke out and everyone got much more polite about the size of their ammunition. Howitzers and field pieces tucked away, the refined gentleman nations of the world played croquet and gin rummy for a few decades until someone -- that is, Germany -- decided to wave their barrels and calibers in everyone's faces.

No doubt about it, the Schwerer Gustav certainly was impressive. Like the old Paris gun, this monster belonged to the German Navy, but unlike the piece that had frightened the City of Light, the Schwerer Gustav was more than a thunderous braggart.

First gun was named "Gustav", the second - "Dora":

The monster was so huge it took a team of 2,500 "volunteers" to lay track for it, and the train carrying and supporting it was 25 cars long, about a mile. (See the rare video of "the biggest gun in the world" firing here)

Unlike the Paris version, it only had a range of about 30 miles, but this one could throw a shell that didn't weigh just 1,000, 2,000, or even 3,000 pounds -- the damned thing could fire a 7,100-kilogram shell! (That's more like 15,620 (US) lbs)

See the 3-D drawings of various German railway guns on this page, made by Greg Heuer:

7. The Centipede Supergun

The Germans weren't the only ones obsessed with the size of their guns. The Brits and the Americans were not to be outdone, but they certainly seemed to be constantly looking down at their drawing boards, and wondering how their guns could be even bigger. Before peace again broke out, Germany had one last idea, a gun that, once and for all, would given them ultimate bragging rights.

What makes the V3 Hochdruckpumpe ("High Pressure Pump", or "Centipede") gun so interesting is that it wasn't one gun but a bunch of smaller ones that fired in precise order to kick its shell faster and faster. Part of the whole Victor Weapon package that included the V1 Buzz Bomb and the V2 (the first ballistic missile), the V3 was to be permanently mounted in a concrete fortress in France where it would have blasted a 300-pound shell more than 100 miles, straight into the heart of London - the Yanks and the Brits, however, blasted the gun into oblivion before it was ready to fire back.

8. More-Than-Supergun to reach stratosphere

Things got coolly polite after the war. We and They still obsessed over the sizes of our pieces, but new toys had begun to seriously threaten the satisfyingly primal big bang of massive artillery. Missiles, luckily, hadn't completely stolen the show. Back in '61 two superpowers, the US and ... Canada? ... worked with the genius gun-designer Gerald Bull on the HARP system, a more-than-supergun designed to reach to the edge of the stratosphere.

Like those charming folks at Krupps, Bull loved his guns. After HARP went nowhere, Bull tried to find someone else to back his idea of a true supergun, a piece to end all pieces. His ultimate project was called Project Babylon, and while Bull's final intentions are a bit hazy, no one doubts that what he really wanted to do was make a gun big enough to do what HARP didn't have a chance to do: fire something into space.

Bull was a genius. But he was profoundly stupid in one very crucial way: his choice of clients. After knocking on all kinds of doors for Project Babylon sponsors, he finally managed to secure the backing of the president of a Middle Eastern country, who'd write the checks if Bull the gun master would build the biggest one in human history.

9. Saddam's Supergun spells doom for its inventor

The problem was the signature on those checks belonged to Saddam Hussein (more info), and a lot of his neighbors began to get kind of ...well, twitchy about someone like Hussein being able to wave Bull's massive piece around, especially, if Bull had succeeded, it would have been able to fire a shell almost 500 miles.

In the end Bull didn't succeed, not because of poor engineering but because of a considerably smaller gun.

A tiny thing, really, compared to what he wanted to show the world. But, as the old saying goes, it's not the size that counts but what you do with it. And the Mossad (the Israeli Secret Service) knew just what to do with their small gun: put a tiny bullet in the brain of the man who was building a supergun for Saddam Hussein.

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17 Comments:

KaiserTroll said...

If you like big ones you'll like the "Monster", a German project from WWII, one like many others who will never see the light. http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landkreuzer_P._1500_Monster and it's specs : http://www.panzerschreck.de/panzer/pzkpfw/p1500.html

That Russian "electric cannon" is basically a coil- or Gauss gun isn't it? Has such a large coilgun ever been built?And about the silentness of such a gun, I wonder to what extent the sound of the shell breaking the sound barrier when fired would match the sound of a conventional gun.

Re. the so-called "Iraqi Super-gun": I never really understood why everyone was so worried? I mean it's not like you can move the bloody thing around, and concealing it would be a cast-iron bitch. And with todays counter-battery-

radars and satellite surveillance....well, let's just say that about 30 seconds after you fire the first shot, everyone and her brother knows, to within a few yards, where your big, precious, sitting-duck supergun is located.

As for the "silent" electromagnetic gun, Bart said: "And about the silentness of such a gun, I wonder to what extent the sound of the shell breaking the sound barrier when fired would match the sound of a conventional gun." Based on

my experience (which is not exactly substantial) with silenced magnum-caliber rifles, it won't be quite as loud, and the noise it makes won't "sound like" a cannon firing. I still think everybody in the neighbourhood will be aware that

The Paris gun had a few interesting operational issues. The biggest was that time of flight was so long that aiming had to allow for the rotation of the earth. The other was that bore wear was so severe that each shell had to be slightly larger and were numbered in the order they were to be used. other crazy large stuff should include the German Morser Karl, a 600mm self propelled howitzer and the US little David 36" mortar.

The is/was a 15" Civil war Parrot gun mounted on display at what was Ft Hancock, NJ, Now part of the Gateway National Park system. A marker at the site declared it was one of only two built.

There is a picture (from 2009)at:https://www.google.com/maps/dir/40.4625485,-74.0052553/Fort+Hancock,+26+Hudson+Ave,+Highlands,+NJ+07732,+United+States/@40.4653987,-74.0055955,3a,75y,221h,90t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sNu5AJBgzBZmxUualc-Gmag!2e0!6s%2F%2Fgeo2.ggpht.com%2Fcbk%3Fpanoid%3DNu5AJBgzBZmxUualc-Gmag%26output%3Dthumbnail%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26thumb%3D2%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D221.93533%26pitch%3D0!7i3328!8i1664!4m9!4m8!1m0!1m5!1m1!1s0x89c2386bbbabafbd:0x6992844b3d179b75!2m2!1d-74.0027778!2d40.4638889!3e2

The shells from the Paris Gun were the first manmade objects to reach the stratosphere. They actually had to take into account the difference in coriolis force at that altitude when plotting the path of the shells. The altitude record stood until the V2.

"Mossad (the Israeli Secret Service) knew just what to do with their small gun: put a tiny bullet in the brain of the man who was building a supergun for Saddam Hussein."Actually he was working for both Mossad and Hussein, and Mossad wanted to end this relationship before it became public. Furthermore, his cannon would have made little sense in war, but could have launched satellites if the electronics could have taken the acceleration.